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Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Ethiopia rejects Egyptian protests over Nile dam

Construction of Grand Renaissance dam to continue despite Eygptian concerns over impact on water supply and farming

Cattle and camels cross a bridge over the river Nile
in Egypt. Photograph: Tor Eigeland/Alamy

Ethiopia has refused to halt work on a controversial giant dam across the river Nile that Egypt fears will severely curb its water supply.
The refusal came after the Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, promised to "defend each drop of Nile water with our blood" and other senior Egyptian politicians called for the dam's destruction.
A
spokesman for the Ethiopian prime minister said on Tuesday that Morsi's
speech was irresponsible and that the project would proceed as planned.
"Nothing
is going to stop the Renaissance Dam. Not a threat will stop it,"
Getachew Reda said via telephone. "None of the concerns the Egyptian
politicians are making are supported by science. Some of them border on
what I would characterise as fortune-telling."
Ethiopia hopes its Grand Renaissance dam – which will cost more than $4.3bn (£2.8bn) – will form Africa's largest hydropower
plant. But Egyptian authorities have contested its construction after
water experts claimed it would drastically lower the level of the Nile,
which supplies almost all of Egypt's water, and could reduce cultivated
farmland by up to 25%.
In a speech to Islamist supporters on
Monday night, Morsi called the Nile "God's gift to Egypt", and
ambiguously veered between calls for peaceful dialogue, and veiled
military threats. He said that while Egypt did "not want war … we do not
accept threats to our security", and claimed that all possible
responses to the dam remained open to Egypt – a line that has been
interpreted as a threat of force.
Last week, other senior Egyptian
politicians were filmed discussing aggressive measures against their
upstream neighbours – apparently unaware that their discussion was being
broadcast live. Younis Makhyoun, the leader of Egypt's second largest
political grouping, the ultraconservative Nour party, suggested to Morsi
in a televised meeting that as a last resort Egyptian intelligence forces could destroy the dam. In response to the embarrassing gaffe, Ethiopia summoned the Egyptian ambassador in Addis Ababa to explain Egypt's stance.
Morsi's own aggressive speech is aimed at a domestic audience as much as a foreign one, as he seeks to regain support ahead of anticipated large protests
against his presidency on 30 June. However insincere his military
threats may be, they are nevertheless rooted in very real and widely
held Egyptian fears about the dam's effect.
Dr Bahaa Alkoussey,
the former chairman of Egypt's National Water Research Centre, and a
one-time senior official in the ministry of water resources and
irrigation, claimed the Ethiopian plans copuld reduce waterflow to Egypt
by more than 10bn kilolitres.
"Then you might cross the Nile on
the back of a camel," he said. "It's not a joke. This is a serious
matter. The Egyptians already have a deficit in their water supply of
about 10bn kilolitres. If you add just 1 kilolitre to that, it will be a
disaster. Now it's already a problem. If you add more reductions, then
you'll have a catastrophe."
Alkoussey claimed the dam would make
it harder for ferries to travel up the Nile, and would cause more
pollution, harming fish farms.
Most seriously, Alkoussey claimed
the dam would devastate the farming community. "Every 1bn kilolitre
reduction in natural flow to Egypt will cause 200,000 feddans [207,600
acres] of land to go out of production, and 500,000 farmers to be out of
work – which will affect 2.5 million families," he said.
Supporters of the dam have argued that Egypt could solve the crisis by using its water more efficiently.
But Hani Raslan, an expert on water politics at Cairo's
government-affiliated Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic
Studies, argued Egypt recycled much of its water. "Egypt is one of the
most efficient countries with water consumption," he said. "Our supplies
are 55bn cubic meters but we consume 70bn, which means we're recycling
15bn cubic meters."
Ethiopia disputes the Egyptian experts'
conclusions, claiming the dam has been largely exonerated by a recently
completed, but as yet unreleased report written jointly by scientists from Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan.
"Of
course we are going to go ahead with the project, because we believe we
are justified," Reda said. "Why would a self-respecting government
spend $4.5bn simply to spite Egypt? It's beyond reason and it's beyond
science. None of the concerns of the Egyptians [are] really something
you can remotely associate yourself with."
http://www.guardian.co.uk